


Another World

by alkjira



Series: Up Into The Silence [1]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dark, Eating Disorder, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Modern Era, Murder, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 16:07:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alkjira/pseuds/alkjira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”  - C.S Lewis.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another World

**Author's Note:**

> Not a happy story. In case you've missed the tags, or think I only write fluff, this is about as far away from fluff as possible.

When Jimmy is seven years old he realises that he’s really called Bilbo, and that his parents aren’t really his parents. He doesn’t tell anyone, but then again, he doesn’t really have to because the people who believe that they are his parents still realise something is wrong when the boy they think is their son spends three days crying for the sake of people he can still remember the names of, but whose faces have begun to blur.  
  
He stops before they can get him to a doctor, but only because he runs out of tears.  
  
He can’t remember his own parents, his real parents, as more than names and warm smiles, a scent of pipe-weed and freshly made bread.  
  
Frodo, his darling Frodo is a blur of dark hair and blue eyes, similar, but not really, to the shade that goes by the name of Thorin.

-  
  
When Adam is 12 he puts a table knife against the throat of a classmate, thinking that he’s an enemy, a threat.  
  
Even though he drops it as soon as he realises what he’s doing, he’s immediately suspended.  
  
But what that matters little when he’s just remembered that he doesn’t belong there anyway. That he is really Thorin Oakenshield, and that he needs to find his nephews, his sister, his… his burglar.  
  
If he is here, in this time, in in this new world, then he surely can’t be alone.  
  
-  
  
Jimmy’s parents are concerned when he goes from being a quite normal child who hates going to bed early, hates broccoli, and loves weekends, to someone they barely even recognize. Someone quiet and extraordinarily polite, and someone whose eyes always seem so very sad.  
  
When he starts coming home littered with bruises they think he’s being bullied at school, and they don’t believe him when he denies it. Bilbo can’t tell them that it’s because he’s used to a much different body; perhaps not a much taller one, but still different in almost every way.  
  
His feet feel too small, but his shoes feel strange, and he can’t trust either of them to take him where he wants to go.  
  
Eventually, when nothing else seems to help, they contact a psychiatrist.  
  
-  
  
Only three weeks after finding out who he really is, Thorin runs away.  
  
He knows it’s not the best of plans, but neither was going up against a Dragon with a company of 13 Dwarfs and a Hobbit. And… well, the Dragon part worked out fairly fine at the end didn’t it? If you stopped the tale right there, it worked out very well indeed.  
  
He manages to stay away from those who’d name themselves his parents for close to a month, probably only due to the fact that he looks a fair bit older than Adam’s 12 years, and as a result he can take the occasional job and rent a room at cheap motels without anyone asking questions. Or so he thinks.  
  
One morning he’s woken up by the police  knocking on his door. He almost makes it out a window and they have to cuff him to be able to take them back to what they believe is his home.  
  
-  
  
One time Bilbo believes he recognizes someone from his real life. But… that person is Smaug, so he doesn’t approach him, he doesn’t even dare to look at him too long, because if he hasn’t remembered, or if he isn’t Smaug after all, nothing good can come from approaching him. And if he _has_ remembered… then Bilbo is fairly sure he still doesn’t want to go anywhere near him.  
  
Not even if he is the only link Bilbo has to his life.  
  
The psychiatrist doesn’t say anything to Jimmy’s parents, because she’s not sure, but in her notes she pens down, _‘social withdrawal, problems sleeping…  dysphoria, clumsinesss - schizophrenia??? SO YOUNG?’  
  
_ When Bilbo slips up and mentions something about those he knew a long time ago, she adds ‘ _imaginary friends… or..?_ ’ to her notes.  
  
-  
  
Thorin will not respond to the name Adam. He can’t. It goes against everything he’s ever fought for, to hide behind someone else’s name and identity. It’s hard enough that he has to hide behind his face.

One time, he’s so sure that he sees his father, his real father across the street. But when he runs to him; almost getting hit by a car in the process, it’s not his father. It’s just some stranger looking at him with pity.  
  
That day he locks himself in the bathroom and stares at the face that is not his in the mirror until he can’t take it anymore and breaks the glass smashing it fit his fist. A shard of the mirror cuts him, and the colour of his blood is the only thing that has seemed familiar to him in a long time.  
  
-  
  
Eating is familiar. Bilbo remembers food as important, and now it turns into something comfortable, something reliable.  
  
But he forgets that his body (because it’s not really _his_ body) doesn’t work the way it used to and before he learns that he often eats too much and makes himself ill.  
  
Still, even with that lesson learnt… things doesn’t taste quite right. Things are not the same.

  
After a while he realises that food doesn’t help after all and then he forgets to eat unless someone reminds him. His body needs much less food than before anyway, so what does it matter.  
  
He, this version of him, is now nine years old.  
  
-

When Thorin is 14 he finally sees someone from his real life, and it’s Azog.  
  
He wants to cry, wants to shout, wants to plead with the beings holding the strings of fate in their hands because how can they be so cruel.  
  
The man looks nothing like Azog, just as Thorin looks nothing like Thorin, but he still _knows_ because he’d recognize the look in those malicious eyes anywhere.  
  
Only, no one else seems to be able to see that look.  
  
Azog, or Malcolm, as he now calls himself is a teacher at Thorin’s new school; a school Thorin only goes to because running away didn’t work last time, so he needs to find a better plan, and until then he might as well go to avoid the mess of not going. The people he lives with are not really his parents, but he doesn’t like when they cry.  
  
He and Azog pass each other in a crowded hallway and Thorin can see that Azog recognizes him in turn. The man, no, the _monster_ smiles, and it chills Thorin to the bones that are not his.  
  
-

When a couple of classmates corner Bilbo after school he doesn’t fight back when they start shoving him around. They’re only children. They don’t know any better. It’s not like they could really hurt him, not compared to being in a battle that took away three people that he loved, loves, always will love and all he could do was to be useless and watch. It couldn’t hurt more than watching Frodo carry a terrible burden that should never have been his, knowing that he was to blame for it.  
  
Perhaps he really is alone here. This could be his punishment for inflicting the evil of the Ring on so many innocents, on his own nephew.  
  
When a teacher finds him, Bilbo is curled up on the ground with a broken nose, but he’s not crying because of the pain.  
  
-  
  
Azog’s main mistake is that he’s always underestimated Thorin. Always. It cost him his arm, and then his life, because even if Thorin did not walk away from that battle, neither did the Orc.  
  
Thorin’s main mistake is that he’s always lacked the insight of the uses of _subtleties_. Of careful planning and restraint. He will find a goal, and then take the direct path there. And he’s not very good at research, that was Balin’s task.  
  
So while Thorin finds a way into Azog’s flat, and a hunting knife (he never thought he would miss anything related to Elves, but the absence of Orcrist in his hands is ever present) finds its way into Azog’s throat, Thorin had not counted on Azog’s _wife_ to come home and discover him. Discover them both  
  
There is a big public outrage. Not really because he killed someone, but because everyone seems to think that they saw it coming a mile away and why didn’t somebody just do something earlier?  
  
Thorin’s foolish heart fills with hope when he realises that this will be a national news story. Perhaps an international one. Someone from his real life could see it. Someone could recognize him.  
  
But… that hope sinks just as fast when he realises that they won’t print photos of a child, regardless of what that child has done, or use his name, any of them.

When he says that he would be amenable to do an television interview his lawyer and Adam’s parents both look horrified and the suggestion is swept beneath a rug and never brought out into the light again. He doesn’t ask again.  
  
He’s too young to go to prison, but where he ends up might as well be one.  
  
Perhaps it is fitting; when the King under the mountain went crazy no one dared call him on it except for one brave Hobbit, and no one listened until it was too late. Now everyone believes him crazy when he’s not. He’s just… lost.  
  
-  
  
Bilbo tries to kill himself. Not in a drastic way, not with pills or with a blade. Nothing like that. He simply... stops eating. There’s never a moment when he actually thinks the words ‘ _I’d rather be dead_ ’ but they still resonate through his entire being.  
  
There are billions of people in the world. Finding anyone in particular of those without knowing their name, where they live,  anything about them except that he belongs with them, it’s hopeless. It’s impossible. It’s.. it’s mad.  
  
-  
  
In a way his life gets easier than it’s ever been since the realisation of who he really is. He doesn’t have to pretend to be anyone else than Thorin in this place. He explained why he had to kill Azog, not really thinking that anyone would listen, but after he’d made it clear that he would not take any of their medicine, they stopped offering.

What Thorin doesn’t realise, perhaps because the drugs are quick to cloud his mind, is that they stopped offering because they began to mix them in his food instead. And he doesn’t realise that he’s staying because those same drugs makes leaving seem to be so very difficult.  
  
Thorin is still not at peace, but for a while things are almost… peaceful.  
  
-  
  
The woman claiming to be his mother asks, _begs_ him, to take the pills that has been prescribed to him. To start eating again, to stop tearing the needle they put in his arm out.  
  
She cries when he tells them that he can’t take the pills, because they’re not really his pills, because he’s not really Jimmy.  
  
She doesn’t stay to listen to the rest of his reply.  
  
He thinks that he’s still Bilbo. But how can he be sure? Mad Baggins they used to call him, and perhaps they were right.  
  
-  
  
“Bilbo?” Thorin breathes with a voice scratchy from disuse.  
  
Because that is Bilbo. Isn’t it? He’s still small, but that’s the only feature he seems to share with the Hobbit Thorin knew.  
  
He’s thin, much too thin, and instead of golden curls there’s a messy mop of brown hair sticking every which way, giving the impression of a startled hedgehog. And his downcast eyes looks brown, nut-brown, but…surely the boy sitting in one corner of the common room is Bilbo. His Bilbo. Thorin can feel it, like you can feel the sun shining on your face even when your eyes are closed.  
  
“Go away,” Bilbo murmurs, and now Thorin is certain, it _is_ his burglar. “Go away, you’re not real.” Softer. “You never are.”

“I am. Bilbo ,I’m real. I’ve found you. You found me.”  
  
There’s no reply. Not until Thorin crouches down next to Bilbo and lifts his chin so that they can look at each other, see each other for the first time in countless Ages.

“Thorin?” Bilbo asks and all Thorin can do is nod, the lump forming in his throat too big to slip words past.  He doesn’t realise that he’s begun to cry until Bilbo raises a shaking hand and thumbs a tear away.  
  
“Thorin, is it really you?”  
  
“I think so,” Thorin says, capturing Bilbo’s hand in his. “Unless this is a dream I’m having. But I never used to dream about you, not while I was asleep anyway. And lately I don’t dream at all.”  
  
“I dream all the time,” Bilbo says slowly. “And then I always wake up. I don’t want to wake up now, if this is a dream.”  
  
Thorin lets out a shuddering breath and presses his forehead against Bilbo’s.  
  
“Then we won’t wake up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Why do I write things that make myself sad? Not that I mean that making anyone else sad is better, but yeah.
> 
> I'm not sure if I need to put more warning tags on this. If you think so, poke me.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Dysphoria](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035292) by [Sansael](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sansael/pseuds/Sansael)




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